Final Roscetti DNA test clears 4

Nearly 14 years after four teenagers were convicted of the rape and murder of medical student Lori Roscetti, Cook County prosecutors are preparing to dismiss the charges and release the three men who remain in prison, sources said Monday.

The decision to drop the cases comes after eight months of DNA testing on semen stains, blood and hairs found on her clothing and at the crime scene has failed to link the four to the October 1986 crime.

On Monday, prosecutors traveled to Roscetti's hometown of Springfield to brief her parents on the unraveling case.

Prosecutors are expected to dismiss the cases at a hearing Wednesday morning before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Porter, sources said. Later that day, Omar Saunders and Larry Ollins are expected to be released from Stateville prison, and Ollins' cousin, Calvin Ollins, will be released from Joliet prison, according to sources. All three men are serving life sentences.

The fourth defendant, Marcellius Bradford, was released after serving 6 years of a 12-year term. He had pleaded guilty and testified against Larry Ollins in exchange for the reduced prison sentence.

Kathleen Zellner, the Naperville lawyer who represents all four of the defendants in their bid to clear their names, said Monday that it was "time to let them go." She said she would file a petition Tuesday asking that Porter vacate the convictions of the four and set aside the sentences, paving the way for their release.

"The evidence has overwhelmingly established their innocence," she said, "and they should all be released without any further delay."

John Gorman, a spokesman for State's Atty. Dick Devine, declined to comment.

The decision to drop the case followed the most recent DNA tests conducted on two head hairs discovered on the coat Roscetti was wearing the night of her murder, the results of which are not yet public. Earlier tests were done on nearly two dozen semen stains, blood and two pubic hairs found in the Subaru she was driving that night. All those tests so far found DNA that has matched two unidentified genetic profiles--neither of which have been identified in various DNA databases of thousands of known sex offenders.

Pat Camden, a police spokesman, said that detectives were working hard to identify Roscetti's murderers, including trying to find the sources of the new DNA profiles.

"This investigation began when factual allegations were brought forward, and it is still continuing," Camden said. "And it's very active."

Family wounds reopened

Roscetti's mother, Lora, said Monday that every new revelation in the case reopened old emotional wounds, leaving her sad and frustrated.

"After 14 or 15 years, you don't think as much about it," she said. "You get on with your life. But with this you just end up reliving it.

"We loved her so much," she added. "It's a terrible thing for us."

Lora Roscetti said that she feared the passage of time would make it difficult for the investigators to find her daughter's real killers.

"It's 15 years," Roscetti said. "How are they going to find them now?"

The Roscetti case came under renewed scrutiny in February, after Zellner filed in court a report written by DNA expert Ed Blake. In it, Blake described testimony offered in the prosecution of the Roscetti case by Pamela Fish, a Chicago police crime analyst, as "scientific fraud." Fish testified that semen taken from Roscetti's body could have come from three of the defendants.

But new DNA tests, conducted at independent labs, showed that semen on Roscetti's underwear and on a vaginal swab were not from any of the four men convicted of Roscetti's abduction, rape and murder.

A Tribune investigation published May 2 detailed how the case against the four was evaporating even before the initial DNA test results were known. Prosecutors had based much of their case on statements from two of the men confessing to Roscetti's murder and rape. Both men later said those statements were coerced by police, and witnesses who testified against the men admitted they lied.

After the initial round of DNA tests seemed to clear the four men, Porter ordered additional DNA tests on all of Roscetti's clothing in an effort to eliminate all possibility of involvement by the four men.

More DNA evidence found

Those tests turned up 22 semen stains on Roscetti's coat and jogging pants--clothes that initially were examined by Fish after Roscetti's body was found on a desolate West Side railway access road. At that time, Fish reported finding no semen stains on those items, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

Fish, who joined the Illinois State Police crime lab in the mid-1990s when it took over the Chicago police lab, was transferred in August from her post as head of the biochemistry section to an administrative job in research and development. She has declined to comment on the case.